Citing Records With Incorrectly Transcribed Names

Citing Records With Incorrectly Transcribed Names

Q. My husband’s family’s Albanian surname Tseko is incorrectly transcribed in many records. How should I cite this in my family tree? A. Transcription errors as well as outright enumeration mistakes are common with census records, and ancestors’ names can be spelled any which way in...

Q. My husband’s family’s Albanian surname Tseko is incorrectly transcribed in many records. How should I cite this in my family tree?

A. Transcription errors as well as outright enumeration mistakes are common with census records, and ancestors’ names can be spelled any which way in these and other sources. There’s no one “right” way to deal with this issue, and you’re certainly free to handle it however you think best in your family tree.

Our advice, though, would be to enter this record as Tseko, especially since that’s how it appears to read to you when eyeballing the original document. If your genealogy program has a field for details or notes about this entry, you could then elaborate with a note, such as “transcribed as Tucker.” It’s especially useful to keep track of this error so that you and others with whom you share your family information can locate that listing again.